Acepylut is doing a comprehensive turn 1, which is taking a while. We might be good to go at the weekend, or perhaps not.

So, some brief musings on what I will be doing early on ...

1) Night bombings on Okinawa airfields and ports. All available competent IJAAF GrdB pilots will be expended to this purpose. There are loads of Sallies, Helens and Lilies available, though no more are being produced. I can see no other use for them. 2) Massive LowN training efforts by both army and navy using any aircraft which cannot competently deliver a torpedo and is not a fighter or in the category above. For Kamikaze purposes obviously. 3) Lots of Air training by fighter units. Live units have settings of Cap 30%, Training 20%. This seemed to work quite well in the previous game. 4) The KB will be going on a trip once I have fully populated it with numpty pilots. This will be a suicide raid and I want to keep the few competent guys back for flying Shindens or whatever. The idea will be to find some soft targets somewhere. 5) Hoarding of both navy and army NavT pilots into a few select groups which will be used for night naval attacks where opportunity presents. 6) China and Indochina evac, of course.

Other than that I will really need to see what happens before deciding on anything else.

What's the thinking behind the 28,000 foot cap on altitude? I ask because with the change in the BETA to fatigue if you fly above 3/4 of the ceiling it seems to largely solve the problem with stratospheric sweeps ( they arrive so fatigued at long range that they get slaughtered that in many cases it doesn't pay for the attacking player to send in a max altitude sweep anymore ).

Do you have an altitude limit for 4-engined bombers?

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John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine." Well, that's that settled then.

Daytime City Attacks may target HI and/or Manpower Nightime City Attacks may only target Manpower

B-29s have visited Hamamatsu on both turns so far in day and/or night phases, targeting Manpower only. The altitude has been high (15,000ft - 28,000ft) and the results minimal. Therefore the opening up of possibilities.

Unfortunately I cannot do a screenshot at this moment, but there have been FT/Amphibious/Paradrop invasions on all the islands directly east of Okinawa. Most of these have either failed immediately due to the automatic shock attack wiping out the attacker or on turn 2 via my Deliberate Attack in response.

All these islands have a generic reasonable quality "Garrison SNLF" unit in place with level 3 or 4 forts. I'm really not sure what Acepylut is trying to do here by spreading things so thinly. Some concentration of force might have lead to better results.

I do now have some airgroups on Naval Attack in the areas where the SCTFs are. Let's see what they can do, there are no CVs or CVEs nearby. Hopefully ... A few torpedo-carrying MLs and MTBs have also been detached for night surface raids.

That last attack was on the "Palembang Squadron", who were attempting to flee to Hong Kong carrying a Const Co. The ships have now been diverted to Camrahn Bay, where there is a small CAP to protect them. The engineers can then hop on the train to Haiphong like all the rest of the Thailand and Indochina units.

The APD TF that got massacred is just one of those which are trying to get reinforcements to the Shimas west of Kanoya and Kagoshima. A couple of other TFs managed to evade the DDs, despite being much slower, though they did not make any deliveries and got retreated to Fukuoka despite having a Direct/Absolute threat setting and Nagasaki as their home port. Strange ...

I am guessing that Acepylut is going to try and invade these Shimas ASAP. He has already tried paradrops, which failed.

It would not be good for me to have US airbases that close to home ...

All those clear hexes east of Tokyo worry the arse off me, so I have despatched a number of Ind Mixed Brigade type units from Tokyo to Hachinohe and Iwaki which were particularly under-manned. Flak and arty will follow.

I have turned Replacements and Upgrade on for all LCUs, and upgraded the TOE of all applicable Base Forces and AA units. So there is nary a Sound Detector or 75mm AA gun to be found anywhere. Now it's all Radars and 88mm or 120mm guns. Rather essential IMO.

As a result the Manpower/Armament/Vehicle pools do not seem to have suffered any precipitous drop, or at least not yet.

The Vehicles pool has suddenly gone to nearly zero. So I have turned off Replacements/Upgrade for all armoured units except for one full tank division in a critical position in the HI.

All other pools doing fine, and HI is increasing by 4,000 a turn. This may be because I have turned virtually all plane production off though. Ki-83s, Ki-201s and J7W1s are what I want, and these are all still in R&D ...

CAP engaged: VF-9 with F6F-5 Hellcat (1 airborne, 4 on standby, 4 scrambling) (8 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 1 plane(s) intercepting now. 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 5 being recalled, 4 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 13000 , scrambling fighters between 2000 and 6000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 42 minutes 4 planes vectored on to bombers VBF-9 with F4U-1D Corsair (0 airborne, 8 on standby, 0 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 8 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 18000 , scrambling fighters between 18000 and 39300. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 28 minutes 5 planes vectored on to bombers VF-10 with F6F-5 Hellcat (3 airborne, 8 on standby, 0 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 3 plane(s) intercepting now. 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 1 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 13000 , scrambling fighters between 3000 and 13000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 32 minutes 9 planes vectored on to bombers VBF-10 with F4U-1D Corsair (0 airborne, 8 on standby, 5 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 3 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 18000 , scrambling fighters between 4000 and 39300. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 37 minutes 9 planes vectored on to bombers VF-13 with F6F-5 Hellcat (0 airborne, 9 on standby, 5 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 4 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 13000 , scrambling fighters between 1000 and 8000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 30 minutes 8 planes vectored on to bombers VBF-13 with F4U-1D Corsair (0 airborne, 9 on standby, 5 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 3 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 18000 , scrambling fighters between 2000 and 16000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 31 minutes 9 planes vectored on to bombers VF-18 with F6F-5 Hellcat (3 airborne, 9 on standby, 5 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 3 plane(s) intercepting now. Group patrol altitude is 13000 , scrambling fighters between 2000 and 6000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 37 minutes 13 planes vectored on to bombers VBF-17 with F4U-1D Corsair (0 airborne, 8 on standby, 5 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 3 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 18000 , scrambling fighters between 2000 and 6000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 28 minutes 4 planes vectored on to bombers VF-82 with F6F-5 Hellcat (0 airborne, 8 on standby, 5 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 1 plane(s) not yet engaged, 3 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 13000 , scrambling fighters between 4000 and 13000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 26 minutes 15 planes vectored on to bombers VBF-82 with F4U-1D Corsair (0 airborne, 8 on standby, 5 scrambling) (3 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 3 plane(s) not yet engaged, 0 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 18000 , scrambling fighters between 6000 and 18000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 43 minutes 8 planes vectored on to bombers VF-83 with F6F-5 Hellcat (0 airborne, 4 on standby, 4 scrambling) (10 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 1 plane(s) not yet engaged, 9 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 13000 , scrambling fighters between 3000 and 13000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 35 minutes 9 planes vectored on to bombers VBF-83 with F4U-1D Corsair (0 airborne, 8 on standby, 5 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 3 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 18000 , scrambling fighters between 2000 and 12000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 35 minutes 8 planes vectored on to bombers VF-84 with F6F-5 Hellcat (4 airborne, 9 on standby, 5 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 4 plane(s) intercepting now. Group patrol altitude is 13000 , scrambling fighters between 3000 and 10000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 35 minutes 8 planes vectored on to bombers VBF-84 with F4U-1D Corsair (0 airborne, 8 on standby, 5 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 5 plane(s) not yet engaged, 0 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 18000 , scrambling fighters between 3000 and 39300. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 41 minutes 13 planes vectored on to bombers VF-85 with F6F-5 Hellcat (0 airborne, 9 on standby, 5 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 3 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 13000 , scrambling fighters between 6000 and 37300. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 38 minutes 4 planes vectored on to bombers VBF-85 with F4U-1D Corsair (0 airborne, 5 on standby, 5 scrambling) (2 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 6 plane(s) not yet engaged, 0 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 18000 , scrambling fighters between 1000 and 18000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 35 minutes 5 planes vectored on to bombers VF-86 with F6F-5 Hellcat (0 airborne, 9 on standby, 5 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 3 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 13000 , scrambling fighters between 5000 and 8000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 40 minutes 12 planes vectored on to bombers VBF-86 with F4U-1D Corsair (0 airborne, 9 on standby, 0 scrambling) (4 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.) 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 4 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 18000 , scrambling fighters between 4000 and 39300. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 39 minutes 9 planes vectored on to bombers VF-7 with F6F-5 Hellcat (3 airborne, 9 on standby, 0 scrambling) 3 plane(s) intercepting now. Group patrol altitude is 13000 , scrambling fighters between 7000 and 11000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 32 minutes 4 planes vectored on to bombers VBF-7 with F4U-1D Corsair (0 airborne, 9 on standby, 0 scrambling) 0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 5 being recalled, 3 out of immediate contact. Group patrol altitude is 18000 , scrambling fighters between 2000 and 18000. Time for all group planes to reach interception is 31 minutes 6 planes vectored on to bombers

Banzai! - Izumida F. in a Ki-49-IIb Helen is willing to die for the Emperor Okamoto S. gives his life for the Emperor by ramming CV Bon Homme Richard Inoue D. gives his life for the Emperor by ramming BB Wisconsin Banzai! - Oba G. in a Ki-49-IIb Helen is willing to die for the Emperor Banzai! - Maeda I. in a Ki-49-IIb Helen is willing to die for the Emperor Banzai! - Suzuki B. in a Ki-21-IIa Sally is willing to die for the Emperor

More importantly, the IJN Reserve is now basically completely empty, the only guys in there generally being a few pilot-leaders passing through after their "demotion".

I have also pulled maybe a hundred or so guys out of the pipeline into IJN training groups. This is not to over-stuff, just populate fully (i.e. at 133%).

The IJA on the other hand has a large and competent Reserve. At least as far as Air and GrdB is concerned. GrdB is pretty much of no use to me, but the Air boys ought to be once the Ki-83 and Ki-201 come on stream. I am not doing the Ki-94 - it's ugly and we are not playing in the stratosphere.

There look to be numerous transports amongst those clusters of green TFs just west of Kyushu. So he's going to land somewhere, the only question is where? I am guessing Fukue-jima, or maybe even Kumamoto which is the clear hex on the mainland.

We have taken what counter-measures we can, but it's pretty desperate. The kami fleets are nowhere near ready for action yet, and neither is anything else really.